Boys of Summer

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1. If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.

2. This story isn't based on anyone in particular, alive or dead, so any resemblance to anybody is unintentional.

Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them. Unless I often hear from you and would recognize your address, please put the story title in the subject, or my junk mail filter may screen you.

Author's note: This story has nothing to do with my other stories.

Our neighborhood was quiet in the summer, which is probably the only reason why the sound caught my attention. Actually, it was quiet almost all the time, but in the summer it was even more so, as people left to go on vacations, or head for their summer cottages on the shore. Even if they were still in town, they usually sent their kids away to day camps, or sleepaway camps, so the tree-shaded, out of the way street my parents lived on tended to be kind of subdued and almost sleepy in the summer. The days tended to blur together, to fall against each other with a kind of droning sameness that seemed like just what I needed after the year I'd had at college.

The days all seemed the same until that day, anyway, when the loud roar of a motorcycle engine split the quiet in the middle of the day.

My friends at college were mostly staying there for the summer, working summer jobs or just not wanting to go home, but I had decided that I needed to get away. I'd only been there for a year, and it had been a good year, but I wanted to get back to familiar ground to try to sort myself out, to come to terms with the things I was feeling and the thoughts I kept having. In high school, around all the same people who expected everyone to always be the same way they always had been, it had been easier to ignore my feelings, to pretend that the things I thought about, and the things I wasn't thinking about, weren't really that important, but at college it was different. At college no one knew who you were, so you could be anybody, and I guess I'd wanted to come home to collect myself because I wasn't sure who I wanted to be.

I was sitting on the front porch, reading a book and thinking about maybe going to hang out at the mall later, when the motorcycle roared slowly down our street. I looked up, curious, and saw that it was pulling into the house next door. I couldn't really tell anything about the guy riding it, other than that he was thin. He had a green dufflebag strapped to his back, and a black leather jacket zipped closed below his helmet. I peered over the top of my book, wondering if maybe he was lost. The house next door to ours was a rambling well kept old Victorian like the one my parents lived in, but the people who lived there didn't have any kids, and this guy was way too thin to be Mr. Becker. Besides, Mr. Becker wouldn't even ride a motorcycle anyway, would he?

The guy swung off of the bike, his jeans stretching over his thighs as he lifted one leg over, and I looked down quickly, reminding myself that those were the kinds of things I wasn't sure that I wanted to be thinking about. His black boots made a faint tapping sound as he walked around to the side of the bike, pulling the duffelbag off and setting it on the seat, and I noticed without wanting to that his ass filled out the jeans pretty nicely. One hand reached up and unzipped the jacket as he began to rummage through the opened top of the bag, but I couldn't really see anything until he reached up to take his helmet off. The jacket opened when he raised his arms, revealing a bare torso underneath, smooth and tan. My eyes took in the rippled abs, the bottoms of rounded pecs, the tiny little belly button, and the thin dark trail of hair leading down from it into his knees.

My dick was hard immediately, painfully trapped in the leg of my shorts, and I knew I was in trouble.

These were the thoughts I was trying to get away from.

All through high school, I'd been part of the crowd. I was popular, I guess, and even if it wasn't as big and brawny and manly as football, the swim team was still a sport, so I guess no one suspected anything. I wasn't consciously hiding anything, I just knew that sometimes, in the back of my mind, I thought about guys, about the way the rest of the team looked in the showers, the water running down their hard chests and strong thighs, dripping off of their nipples. Sometimes it was all I could do to get through practice and get home without springing a hardon where anyone would see. I tried very hard not to have those thoughts. I knew my friends weren't having them, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be. I dated girls, the girls in our group, but so did everyone. There weren't any really serious couples among my friends, and high school being what it was we really didn't think anything of being with someone for a couple weeks, or even a couple months, and then seeing them date your best friend.

My parents didn't really seem to think anything of it, and from the outside, I guess I looked like a mostly normal, but just a little shy, regular guy. I kind of thought that I was just a late bloomer or something, and that maybe I would feel that way about a girl when I met the right one. I'd made out with a few girls, had gotten naked a few times for some typical high school fumbling and groping. I'd gotten a few handjobs, and even once a blowjob, but for the most part I did what a lot of guys my age who weren't getting it regularly did, and jerked off when I needed to. I tried to convince myself that the fact that most of my jerkoff fantasies involved me and hot guys I knew doing nameless, faceless girls together really meant nothing. Maybe I was just into threesomes.

At college, though, it was different. My roommate was nice, if a little quiet, and was hardly ever around. He went home to see his girlfriend every weekend, and when he was there during the week he had a different crowd of friends than I did. We passed in and out of our room, friendly, but not really best friends like I'd always thought my college roommate and I were supposed to be. Instead I made a bunch of other friends, and that's when I started to realize that I didn't have to be the person I'd always been. Nobody from my high school went to the same college as me, so my new friends only knew what I told them. That worked both ways, though. They didn't think the same things about me that all my old friends did, because there weren't any old patterns here to fall back into. They didn't really know who I was, and I realized slowly throughout the year that I didn't really know who I was, either. I was just kind of drifting, waiting for something to change.

And now, maybe something was. Things were at least changing in the neighborhood, at any rate. Who the hell was this guy? And what was he doing over there, anyway? The Beckers were gone for the summer, spending it at some condo down in Florida, and even if they were here this didn't look like the kind of guy who would stop to visit them. They weren't stuffy or anything, but this guy looked a little rough around the edges in his faded jeans.

I kept watching over the top of my book as he pulled the helmet off, setting it next to the bag as he shook out his hair. It was brown, not light or dark, and long, hanging about to his chin. He pushed it back with one hand as he continued rummaging through the bag, and as he pulled out a set of keys he looked up. His dark blue eyes met mine as he caught me staring, and I knew that I was busted. His face, pretty good looking with a long, narrow nose, a good chin, and rounded cheekbones, remained kind of neutral as he nodded at me. He was maybe twenty feet away, but I almost felt like I could feel his breath. He had a presence, and right then it seemed like it was close.

"Hey," he said, slinging the bag back over his shoulder and picking up the helmet. The movement opened his jacket again, offering the same flash of his toned stomach, but also throwing in the briefest glimpse of a brownish nipple.

"Hey," I said, nodding from my place in my lounge chair, my knees raised a little to hide the tent in my shorts.

He walked up the driveway, unlocked the front door, and vanished into the Beckers' house.

I jumped out of my chair and ran into my house, heading to my room with my cock throbbing painfully in my pants.

I had my pants undone before I even got through my door, tugging them and my boxers down as I bolted for my bed. Nobody was home, as my parents both worked all day long, but I shut the door behind me anyway. Nobody was there to see me throwing myself across the bed, pulling my shirt up out of the way. Nobody was there to see me throw my head back and close my eyes as I wrapped my fingers around my shaft and began to stroke, not taking the time to go slow. Nobody was there to see my other hand tugging at my balls, and nobody was there to know what I was thinking about. Nobody knew that I was picturing those eyes, that face, or that sculpted torso, and nobody was there when I came, hard, all over my stomach. It shot out everywhere, splattering across my stomach, and I tried to catch my breath. I hadn't had to jerk off in the middle of the day since I was in high school, but I hadn't gotten worked up like that in a while.

Who was he? What was he doing next door? How long was he staying?

When I walked back downstairs, after cleaning myself up and flushing the tissues, leaving no evidence behind if my mother tore through my room on a cleaning spree, I glanced out front again and saw that the motorcycle was gone. The driveway was empty, but I hadn't heard the engine, so he must have rolled it into the Beckers' garage. I sat on the porch reading for the rest of the afternoon, but he didn't come back outside.

I mentioned him to Sam when we were walking around the mall that night.

Sam and I had been friends since elementary school, meeting when he and his family moved into the house across the street from mine in the second grade. He was a skinny little kid then, even shyer than I was, and the first day of school he was standing by himself out at the bus stop, holding his lunchbox and watching the clump of kids standing a few feet away. Nobody talked to him, though, and I started to feel a little bad as he nervously glanced down the street every couple of seconds, looking for the bus in one direction and then looking at his house in the other, as if he might just give up on the whole school thing and hightail it to his front door. I felt a little bad for him, and I thought his sneakers were kind of cool, so I walked over.

"Hi," I said, staring at his shoes.

"Hi," he answered. Yeah, we were really articulate for second graders.

"I'm Nathan. I like your shoes."

"I'm Sam. You live across the street from me."

"Yeah," I agreed, nodding. "You wanna sit with me on the bus?"

Within the week, we were fast friends. Sam and I spent every afternoon running back and forth between each other's houses, playing in each other's yards, or riding our bikes up and down the streets as far as we were allowed to go. (At that age, it wasn't very far.) He had lived in three different towns because his dad moved a lot for work, which I thought was really exciting, and I had always lived on my street, which he for some baffling reason also thought was exciting. He liked all the same cartoons I did, and had all the cool toys that I wanted, and I think he was better friends with my video game system before he was friends with me.

We started the sleepovers, what both of our mothers referred to as the Saturday Evening Exchange, after the first month we'd known each other, and we kept them up all the way through grade school and junior high. One Saturday we slept over at my house, and the next Saturday we slept over at his. When he stayed at mine, his mother made him get up and go to church with us on Sunday, but when I stayed at his house his mom didn't make us go if we didn't want to. We went to the same day camps in the summers, stupid craft and activity things down at the youth center, and in junior high school we both got into the same classes and tried out for the swim team together.

When we started high school his parents got a divorce, and he and his mother moved to a smaller house on the other side of our town. His dad moved away somewhere, and had gotten remarried a couple of years ago. He had two small kids with his new wife, and didn't really seem all that interested in Sam anymore, so I felt bad for him, especially when my parents were so stable. The most excitement we ever seemed to have in my house was when my mom switched around the menu and made chicken on pot roast night, but I guess, looking at Sam's family, that could be a good thing. At least my parents loved each other, and me, even if they were a little subdued. I'd been one of those late in life babies, so my parents already seemed older than everybody else's anyway, and I guess the fact that my house was so quiet just reinforced that for me.

After Sam moved, our weekly sleepovers kind of fell off. It wasn't so easy when we had to catch a ride back and forth, since neither of us had a car, but we managed to make it once a month or so, just to get together and hang out. Things were different as we got older. Sam kept going to our high school, but we weren't in the same classes anymore, even if we did still see each other around school. We still had the same group of friends, but he switched from the swim team to track, which meant we weren't going away on the same meets or going to the same practices. We were still best friends, though, and we talked about all the things that best friends did. We talked about our other friends, our families, our plans for after high school, the girls we went out with, and how far we got with them. We'd discovered jerking off years before, hearing about it from some older boys, but we'd never done it together, and up until our junior year we'd both been virgins. Sam finally lost his to some girl on the track team, in the back of the bus on the way home from a meet really late at night, and I congratulated him while I wondered why I wasn't having any luck, and why it didn't really seem to bother me all that much.

When we decided to go to different colleges, because we'd been offered scholarships to two different schools, it had been a very emotional decision for us both. When we were little kids we'd promised that we'd be best friends forever, but now here we were as adults, just finding our way, and the first thing we were going to do was separate. I could hardly imagine being at school, or going to a party, or hanging out with any of my friends without Sam there, and he felt the same way. When we finally did tell each other, we were both so nervous that we barely got the words out, sitting on the bench on my front porch with our acceptance letters, waiting for my mom to call us in for dinner.

"Wait, you're going away, too?" Sam asked. He'd just finished explaining how it was a hard decision, but that he was going to have to go to a different school, and all I'd had to say was, "Me, too."

"Yeah," I answered, looking at my letter again. "I know we both said that we were going to State with everybody else, but I don't know. I feel like I need to get away, you know?"

"Yeah," Sam said, patting my shoulder. "I think I do. I didn't really want to tell you, but I can't go to State. My dad isn't going to give me any money for it. He gave me this whole long bullshit speech about how I'll appreciate my education more if I pay for it myself, and how nobody gave him a free ride, but I think he really just wants to spend the money on the twins."

"Is that what we're calling Liza now?" I asked, giggling. Sam's stepmother, Liza, had gotten a breast implant from his father for Christmas, and they were huge. Sam laughed, and punched me in the arm.

"Shut up," he said, giggling. "I meant their kids. He's not going to give me anything, and he doesn't have to pay any more support once I turn eighteen. My mom can't really afford to send me to State, so I guess it's good that I got this scholarship, you know?"

"You worked your ass off for that," I said, rolling my eyes. "They didn't just give it to you."

"You neither," he said, pulling my letter out of my hands. "Congratulations, man."

The two of us were quiet for a second.

"Sam?"

"Yeah, Nate?"

"We're still friends, right? We're not going to, like, stop talking to each other and stuff because of this, are we?"

"No, stupid," he answered, throwing his arm around my shoulders for a second. "You're always gonna be my best friend."

And he still was. We called each other every week while we were away, and sent each other e-mail and instant messages every day. It made college a little less frightening, a little less intimidating, knowing that my best friend was going through the same thing. On the breaks we hung out almost every night, sleeping over at each other's houses, talking and hanging out, and things were almost like they used to be. Now we were home for the summer, and we were back on our calling each other every day sort of schedule. He was working a summer job at the video store to help pay for school again in the fall, but I didn't have to work, even though I thought about it. After work he'd call me, and we'd either just talk, or we'd hang out, going to a movie or something. On the weekend there was usually a party at someone's house, so we went to a lot of those as well.

Tonight after dinner he'd asked if I wanted to go to the mall and walk around, because he needed to go pick up a card for his girlfriend. It was Sam's nice way of asking if I would drive him to the mall, but since my mom didn't mind letting me take the car and I knew that he would hang out with me either way, I didn't have a problem with it. I drove over to get him, pulling up in front of his house to find him sitting out on the step, tapping his shoes on the sidewalk and waiting for me. He smiled as he climbed into the Jeep, but I could see that he looked kind of tired.

"Sam?" I asked, heading for the mall. "You ok?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah. My mom's just, you know, having a bad night."

After Sam's dad left, Sam's mom started drinking. Most of the time it was ok, but sometimes she had a little bit too much, and Sam had to take care of her. I wasn't sure what it had been like for her while Sam was gone away to school, but my mother had told me privately that Sam's mom was "really going downhill," and I knew that had to be hard for him. I thought, not for the first time, that my life was so much easier compared to his.

"So we're getting Jennifer a card?" I asked, redirecting. Sam brightened immediately.

"Yeah," he answered, grinning widely, his face lighting up. "It's our seven month anniversary this week."

Sam was the perfect boyfriend. He remembered every birthday, every first date, every anniversary, and everything else that girls seemed to find so important. He'd met Jennifer at school, and for weeks all I heard was how much they were in love and how perfect she was for about the first five minutes of any conversation we had. She lived right down the hall at school, but the summer was kind of rough for both of them, since she lived out of state. She was working at a summer camp, so she couldn't come visit him, and he couldn't really afford to travel to visit her. Instead, there were a lot of long letters back and forth, and the occasional card. Glancing at Sam, with his sandy blond hair and lanky physique, and the little smattering of dark stubble on his chin where he was trying very hard to grow in a goatee, I could see why she loved him. He was smart, sensitive, and cute.

"I can't believe you didn't meet anyone at school," Sam said again, for about the twentieth time that summer. "What did you do? Stay in your room and not talk to anybody? Were you lying about all those parties you went to?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I met people. I met a lot of people, and I went out a lot. I told you, I just, you know, I haven't met the right person."

"Maybe it wouldn't hurt if, you know, you met the wrong person every once in a while," Sam said, giggling, as I parked the Jeep.

"Shut up," I said, rolling my eyes.

"No, I'm serious," he said. "Men have needs, you know. I don't want you to explode or something."

"I've got that problem well in hand," I said, and we both laughed. It was an old joke between us, but it was fun. It was a little too close to this afternoon for me, though, to what I had done. Now that I thought about it more, I was shocked at myself, not only for doing it, running upstairs like a fourteen year old, but also that I'd done it over a guy I'd seen for maybe a minute.

And I'd been thinking about him.

I wasn't thinking about him and I and someone else, close to each other, naked, but not touching. I'd been thinking about him, playing those few seconds when his jacket had parted and flashed his tanned body at me over and over in my head on an endless loop until I'd exploded. Sam didn't really catch the change in my mood, but I was only half focused on what he was saying about Jennifer as I followed dutifully from store to store while he looked at cards and scented stationery and maybe some sort of small stuffed animal or candy or something he could send her. I was too busy trying to figure out what I was thinking, but at the same time I was also trying to figure out more about this guy. I kept coming back to the same questions, though, and I raised them to Sam when we stopped to get a drink at the food court.

"This guy showed up at the Beckers' house today," I said, sipping my milkshake.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Like a repairman or the gardener or something?"

"No, not like that," I answered, thinking. "He just kind of roared up on this motorcycle in the middle of the day."

"Roared up?" Sam asked, laughing. "Just 'cause you're an English major doesn't mean you have to get all metaphorical all the time."

"Shut up," I laughed. "The whole thing was just kind of strange. He pulled up, and, you know, he didn't really look like, I don't know, like he'd know them."

"You mean he was like a Hell's Angel or something?" Sam asked, his eyes brightening. "Did he have one of those bikes with the big monkey bar handlebars?"

"I think they're called ape hangers, and no, he didn't," I answered. "He didn't have a chick on the back in a bikini, either, if that's your next question."

"So?" Sam asked, waiting.

"Well, they're out of town," I said, shrugging. "They asked my parents to keep an eye on the house and stuff for them, and all of a sudden this guy shows up, and he had a key to the house. He put his bike in their garage and everything."

"Did he look dangerous?" Sam asked, still trying to understand what I'd said before.

"No, he just looked a little, I don't know, a little rough," I answered, shrugging. "He was about our age, and he didn't look like really tough or anything, but there was just this, I don't know, attitude or presence or something."

"Did you ask him who he was?" Sam asked logically. I blushed a little, feeling kind of foolish.

"No, I didn't," I answered, looking down.

"Why not?"

Because I would have had to stand up and then he would have noticed an enormous hard on sticking out of the front of my shorts.

"I guess I just didn't think of it," I said. "The whole thing just seemed kind of weird."

"And what?" Sam asked, giggling. "You think this guy killed the Beckers, stole their house key, and is hiding there? Or maybe he used to live in the house before they did, and his grandfather buried treasure under the cellar floor, and he's been waiting all this time for the house to be empty so that he can come back and dig it up?"

"God, no," I said, rolling my eyes again. "I mean, I don't think so."

"So what's the problem?" Sam asked.

"It just seemed weird," I repeated. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly.

"Did he says something to you?" Sam asked, looking concerned. He leaned forward, his face getting a little serious. "I mean, did he bother you or flash his switchblade or something?"

"No, why?" I asked.

"You just seem kind of unsettled," Sam answered, sitting back again. "But if you didn't even talk to him, I guess I just don't get it."

"Neither do I," I sighed, and it was true. I couldn't stop thinking about this guy, but I didn't have any answers.

I dropped Sam off in front of his house, and looking around I felt a little bad about what I'd said before, about that guy looking a little rough. Looking around at where Sam lived now, the whole neighborhood was a little different from what I was used to, and I worried for a second that maybe Sam had been hurt by what I'd said, even if I didn't mean it.

"Night, bud," Sam said, patting my arm as he hopped out of the Jeep. I flicked the window switch down after he shut the door.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?" he asked, turning back, his face hidden in shadows.

"Call me if you need anything, ok?" I said. "I mean it."

"I know you mean it," Sam said, shrugging. "Weirdo. Oh, and Nate, about your mysterious neighbor? Maybe next time he's out tooling up and down the road on his Harley you should stop and talk to him. Make a friend."

"I already have plenty of friends," I said stubbornly.

"Yeah, but maybe he doesn't," Sam said. "Good night."

"Night," I said, and drove home.

My house was dark, and my parents were asleep when I got home. Hanging the car keys on the hook in the kitchen, I stood in front of the refrigerator and thought about grabbing something to drink before bed. I poured myself a glass of water, and when I closed the refrigerator door and turned to walk upstairs a light went on in the Beckers' kitchen, catching my attention. Their kitchen was at the back of the house, like ours, but I'd never really noticed before that you could stand in our kitchen and look directly into theirs. There hadn't been a reason to before now.

The houseguest stood in front of the open refrigerator door, the light from it spilling across his body as he leaned on the door with one arm. I could only see him from the waist up, because of the windows, but he was shirtless in the dark kitchen. My eyes ran up and down his ribs, taking in the curves of his torso, noting the way that his pecs curved out from his chest, and I could make out one nipple like the sprinkle on an ice cream cone. He opened a bottle of orange juice and tilted his head back, drinking it right out of the bottle while I watched his Adam's apple bob and traced the lines of his neck. He screwed the lid back on the bottle and put it back in the refrigerator, swinging the door closed as he turned to walk away. In the fading light I saw him bounce a little as he walked, and saw the curve of his ass, muscled and firm, before the kitchen went dark.

He was naked.

I was hard.

I wanted him, and I didn't even know his name.

To be continued.